In Leverett, a number of families have problems with standardized tests like MCAS or the federal Partnership for Assessment of Readiness for College and Careers, better known as PARCC. Those families keep their children home on test days and have found a sympathetic ear among their school and town officials — even now as the Leverett Elementary School has been penalized by the state.
The critics of standardized tests argue that they force the teacher to teach to a test, stifling individuality and innovation. They don’t agree that it is a good tool for measuring a student’s educational progress and to provide common benchmarks within districts as well as the state.
But Leverett and other schools are finding out that allowing students to skip these test has consequences. The state downgraded the district to a Level 3 in its five level ranking, because too few students took the tests the last time around.
The official downgrade has school and town officials crying foul. In a letter earlier this month to state Department of Elementary and Secondary Education Commissioner Mitchell Chester, the Selectboard argues that the “rating reclassification bears no relation to the actual performance and quality of Leverett School education. Rather, it appears to be a retaliatory response to the decision by some of our students and their parents to not participate. … The department’s reclassification of the Leverett School demonstrates an incoherent structure for accountability and assessment. It provides Leverett with no tools or indicators, and fails to show any actual educational problem.”
The results from those who actually took the test showed the average math score increased 5 percent compared to last year, while there was no significant change in English scores.
Just 82 percent — 56 of the 68 eligible students — took the exam. But without close to full participation, it’s hard to determine the district’s actual overall rating. Did the best or worst students opt out? Town officials assume the overall ranking wouldn’t have changed had all students tested. That may be, but how do you prove it?
Massachusetts education officials have set a 95 percent participation rate as the benchmark. And as Stephen G. Sireci, director of the Center for Educational Assessment at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, pointed out in a recent story, “The federal government mandates that any school accepting federal funding have a 95 percent participation rate. The state requirement is basically just echoing the federal requirement.”
The reservations about tests like the MCAS and PARCC are nothing new. Some families, educators and communities have pushed back against these tests for more than a decade. But the continued use of standardized tests is the norm, and the results play into the state’s assessment of districts and the education they provide. The testing protocol evolved from a perception more than a decade ago that public schools needed improving across the nation and fixing that problem required standardized testing and comparisons.
We appreciate Leverett’s determination to make a change here. Perhaps the town’s officials can take on a larger leadership role in getting other communities behind an effort to alter the state’s reliance on such tests. Maybe, at the least, there are ways to carve out exceptions. But in the meantime, can anyone expect that there wouldn’t be consequences for a lack of participation?
You have to play by the rules of the game you’re in, or work to change the rules.